AFCEC engineers mentor tomorrow's STEM professionals during robotics competitions

  • Published
  • By Teresa Hood
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  NOTE: National Engineers Week is Feb. 17-23. During the annual commemoration, AFCEC reaches out to schools in the area to establish mentoring opportunities such as this to encourage students to pursue STEM disciplines.

Two civil engineers from the Air Force Civil Engineer Center here got a head start on the "Celebrate Awesome" theme of this year's National Engineers Week, Feb. 17-23, by participating in several Lego robotic challenges.

Held every year since 1951 in the week surrounding George Washington's birthday, National Engineers Week publicly recognizes engineers' year-round contributions and STEM outreach efforts.

"STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math," said Bryan Muller, an AFCEC engineer at Tyndall. "It's is a nation-wide program to promote these areas to students within our educational system. The Lego robotics challenges are a great STEM opportunity."

Muller and fellow AFCEC engineer 2nd Lt. William Page served as judges for the robot design portion of several qualifying events within the First Lego League's Florida Panhandle district in recent months.

"It's great that I can come out here and help these kids with what they're interested in, with Legos and robotics," Page said at a January event. "My dad is an engineer and so am I. This is stuff that I loved as a kid, but I never had these types of opportunities, so this is wonderful."

First Lego League is a robotics program for children ages 9 to 14 designed to get them excited about science and technology, according to its website. The challenges involve more than designing and programming a robot and running it through a timed obstacle course.

"This year's core values theme is 'Senior Solutions,'" said Patrick Hermes, an engineer and coach for a team from Covenant Christian School in Panama City, Fla. "The teams are also judged on creating an innovative solution to help seniors. They have to do a lot of research, data collection and processing, and then do a presentation."

At the January event, the students were divided on their favorite part of the competition:
"Mine was probably designing the project and working with the other members of my team to help seniors," said Logan Bernatt, a member of the five-person team from the Science and Discovery Center in Panama City.

"We program the motors to do different stuff using degrees, rotations and seconds," said Jeremiah Sexton, a student at Davidson Middle School, Crestview, Fla. "Seconds are my favorite thing."

"I like all of it," said McKenna Steele, also from Davidson. "I've been at it for three years. I want to be an engineer for the Army to make robots."

In terms of encouraging children to embrace STEM-related careers, the FLL challenges seem to be working.

"I've learned how to program an XT robot and what it really means for engineering," said Becca Starke, from the Science and Discovery Center team. "It's not just sitting around on a computer, it's actually getting out there, getting your information and getting it done."

Nathan Redmond, an 11-year-old on the same team, has no doubt about his future career.

"I would really like to be a robotics engineer. It's been my dream for a long time, ever since I was six or seven," he said.

The Science and Discovery Center team's scores at the Feb. 2 event earned them a berth at the Florida state FLL competition in early March.

"We're really excited about it," said the team's coach, Master Sgt. Phillip Starke, dormitory manager for Tyndall's 325th Civil Engineer Squadron. "As a coach, my biggest challenge is to let the kids figure it out. That's a very key part to this program."

Throughout any given year, AFCEC engineers participate in many other STEM-related community outreach activities but the FLL competitions are especially rewarding, Muller said.

"What's exciting to me as an engineer is that they're having fun doing something that is technical. Building a robot is of course the exciting flagship event, but we're also seeing cooperation among a team, learning the early stages of how a group meets and how they make decisions about which way to go -- all the things they'll need later in life.

"As engineers and judges, we're always impressed at the enthusiasm we see and the innovation they put together. It's amazing, just awesome," he added.